


Walk Me Home

by writewithurheart



Series: Black Widow: The Redacted 5 Years [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of the Snap, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Endgame Canon Deaths, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Fallen Comrades, Missing Scene, The Missing 5 Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22249216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writewithurheart/pseuds/writewithurheart
Summary: Something about sitting with Steve at the end of the dock, a case of beer between them with their legs dangling over the edge, brings Natasha back to before Thanos, before the Accords, back to when they were in charge of training the new recruits. Back when things were simpler.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Series: Black Widow: The Redacted 5 Years [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1362391
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	Walk Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> Title from P!nk's "Walk Me Home".

**Walk Me Home**

Something about sitting with Steve at the end of the dock, a case of beer between them with their legs dangling over the edge, brings Natasha back to before Thanos, before the Accords, back to when they were in charge of training the new recruits. Back when things were simpler. 

Things were good back then. There was laughter and smiles. A stone’s throw from where they now sit, she and Steve ran training exercises using paint instead of actual projectiles. In the compound they held movie nights, argued about tv shows, and bitched about politics. She leans sideways to bump shoulders with Steve. 

“Hey, remember when Scott kicked Sam’s ass and he refused to tell us about it?” 

Steve snorts and rolls his eyes even though she can see the heartbreak at the mention of their fallen comrades. “He claimed his gear started to malfunction.” 

Natasha smiles into her beer. “Then started going on about the crazy winds. Came out of nowhere.” It hadn’t fooled either of them. Especially not when Vision had proceeded to pull up the security footage and analyze the fight. Vision was fascinated by the mathematics. Sam had just wanted to save face and then started muttering about superheroes, their insanity, and how his mother raised him better than this. 

Meeting Mama Wilson was another of those good things. Natasha stares down at her hands and wills the tears away. Sam had taken them to meet his mother once. Before they went on the run, of course. She was a woman full of brass who took no shit from anyone. She had ushered all three of them through the door to her small home and promptly sat them all down around her table and fed them so much food that even Steve was full by the end of it. 

Mama Wilson hadn’t bat an eye when Team Cap went on the run. Natasha had been the one sent to talk to her, to see if she would help them get through to Sam. The woman had crossed her arms and said, without so much as a twitch: 

“Now, I know you ain’t tryna get me to turn on my son. That boy knows what he’s about. The question is why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with those boys?” 

Mama Wilson’s gone now: lost, not to the Snap, but to a car accident when car crossed the highway after its driver vanished. One of thousands of tragic stories of what happens when someone disappears in the middle of going about their lives. They lost too many good people that way. 

With the Snap there was hope. 

For others, there wasn’t even that. 

Her thoughts have turned maudlin and Natasha throws back the rest of her beer to chase away the ghosts that linger. There are too many truthfully. The vanished are still being counted. No one has heard from Tony since he left in the alien craft. Reports are that Peter was with him. If Natasha finds out he was dusted too, she doesn’t know how she’ll hold it together. Her baby spider was too young for this life. 

She needs vodka, not this cheap crap that won’t get her buzzed, let alone drunk. 

“It shouldn’t be this peaceful.” 

Natasha blinks and turns to Steve as he frowns up at the sky. “What?” 

“You ever think about that? We’ve lost so much and yet you look around…” he takes a sip of his beer. “It’s quiet. Serene. If I didn’t feel the holes they left, it might even be nice.” Steve scowls. “I thought I would enjoy peace, that it meant an end to the fighting. This just feels like defeat.”

“We’ll get him, Steve. We’ll find Thanos and we’ll bring them all back. All of them. Bucky, Sam, Wanda, T’Challa, all of them.” She has to believe it. She refuses to accept anything less. This war isn’t over: she just hasn’t figured out where to point her guns yet. 

Steve falls back against the dock to stare up at the stars overhead. “It feels like a betrayal. This. The peace.” 

It’s called Survivor’s Guilt, but Natasha refuses to say those words out loud. Because that would be admitting defeat. It would be confirming deaths, and she can’t do that, not to Steve, who has lost too much. 

Natasha lost the Bartons, who were her family. But she didn’t lose everyone. Yelena’s still out there. Frankly, she’s surprised her sister bothered to reach out, but the bottle of vodka she left at the compound is sitting right on Natasha’s dresser where she left it the week after the Snap. But the rest of her team...Laura...Lila...Nate… 

She curls in on herself and then: “I don’t know if I can do this.” 

Steve props himself up to look at her. “Nat-” 

“Everything’s wrong. And all we’re doing is waiting.” 

“Captain Danvers-” 

She whips her head around to look at him and Steve’s words die before they can leave his lips. “Everything out there is wrong, Steve.” She blinks back the tears. “Everything we hear: it’s bad. Really bad. Do you- What if we can’t fix it? What if this just is what it is, Steve? I was supposed to be doing good, wiping the red from my ledger and instead-” Her voice cuts off on a strangled gasp as the tears pour in, red hot. 

“Hey, Nat. Nat, listen to me.” Steve’s hands cup her face, brushing tears and hair out of her face to get her to look at him. “We’ll deal with it. Whatever happens. We’ll fix it. Whatever it takes.” 

His ernest words hit her like a punch to the solar plexus. It leaves her gasping for air, desperately clinging to the fervor in his clear blue eyes as they bore into hers. If she knows one thing, it’s that Steve will move planets to bring his truth into reality. It’s both his best and worst trait. 

Suddenly, she’s back in the mall when they were hiding from Rumlow in plain sight, back to when she told him to kiss her because public displays of affection make people nervous, to the feel of his soft lips against hers. Their shared air grows tense as her breathing increases. She wants to stop thinking: she needs to. She needs to remember what’s good, needs to find something to keep her fighting. 

This conversation: it’s not helping. 

But Steve is. 

Steve helps. 

Natasha swallows thickly, wondering how Steve will respond to her offer. “Steve-” 

He hasn’t pulled away, which is a good sign, at the very least. She lifts her own hand to cup his cheek over the start of prickly stubble. “What?” 

“I can’t…” She takes another deep breath. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.” 

“Nat,” he warns, voice soft. But he still hasn’t moved away. “We shouldn’t.” 

“There’s too much buzzing around in my head. I need you to remind me what’s good. Please, Steve.” 

He wavers. A thumb slips to run over her bottom lip, eyes following the motion. 

Natasha could push him now, just take control and Steve would fold. She wants him to take the step, to take as much comfort from her as she wants from him. “Walk me home?” 

As she stands, their contact breaks but the intensity in Steve’s eyes never falters. She holds her hand out to him. An offer. No strings attached. “It’s getting late.” 

He grabs her hand. Standing, he towers over her, all tightly wound muscles and control, solid in a way their world isn’t right now. He nods silently and lets her pull him back towards the compound. They don’t say anything and the compound is pretty much empty. Banner is somewhere, probably avoiding Natasha still. Thor was off in search of Doctor Foster, Rhodey with Pepper. There’s no one to stop them as Natasha brings them to her bedroom door. 

She presses her back against it as she turns to face Steve. She feels vulnerable, young in a way she hasn’t felt since she killed her first target. “Stay with me tonight.” 

“Nat,” he whispers, stepping just a little closer. “We’re both grieving.” 

“All I’m asking for, Rogers, is company. I want to chase the monsters away. Both our monsters.” She takes a shaky breath. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. I just can’t be alone with all this running through my mind. Please.” 

She hates him for making her beg, for bringing the tears back to the surface, for being so damn noble that he almost refuses because he thinks it might be taking advantage of her. She’s a big girl. She can make her own damn decisions- 

Steve’s lips slap into hers and finally, FINALLY, she can drown in something other than grief. Finally the wrong outside quiets to a dull roar as she loses herself in sensations other than pain. Soon enough it will be gone and the sorrow will crash back in, but for now, she can remember the good.

**Author's Note:**

> I was hit by Natasha feels, so I'm coming back to this series. I've got a bunch of plans from Steve/Natasha to Aunt Natasha with Morgan, to tie ins with Yelena Belova. We'll see if I write all of it.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think!


End file.
